A severe viral outbreak at a rehabilitation center for “medically fragile children” has left six youngsters dead and 12 others sick, the New Jersey Department of Health said on Tuesday.
There have been 18 cases of adenovirus at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, about 50km northwest of New York, the department said in a statement.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an e-mail that it is providing technical assistance to the state.
In the past 10 years, cases of severe illness and death from the type of infection found at the facility have been reported in the US, CDC spokeswoman Kate Fowlie said in an e-mail, though it is unclear how many deaths there have been.
The strain afflicting the children is usually associated with acute respiratory illness, said the CDC, which on its Web site instructs health workers to report unusual clusters to state or local health departments.
The department did not release the ages of the victims or address the severity of the illness in the other dozen cases.
The six deaths happened this month, department spokeswoman Donna Leusner said.
The facility was instructed not to admit new patients until the outbreak ends and the department said the number of new cases appears to be decreasing.
William Schaffner, an infectious disease professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said these kinds of fatalities are not common, but they are known to happen.
“Here I think you have this kind of nasty combination of very fragile children and this particularly aggressive virus,” he said.
The strain in the New Jersey outbreak is No. 7 and is affecting “medically fragile” children with severely compromised immune systems, the department said.
It has been associated with communal living and can be more severe.
A scientific paper cited by the CDC reported that a 1998 outbreak of type 7 adenovirus at a pediatric chronic-care facility in Chicago claimed the lives of eight patients.
The 2001 paper said civilian outbreaks of the type 7 infection had not been frequently reported because of a lack of lab resources, and that the full impact on chronic-care facilities and hospitals is likely underestimated.
In New Jersey, a team was at the center on Sunday last week and on Tuesday, and found “minor handwashing deficiencies,” the department said.
“The Health Department is continuing to work closely with the facility on infection control issues,” the department said in a statement.
The center helps educate “medically fragile children,” according to its Web site.
Messages left with the center were not returned.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said in a statement that he was “heartbroken” about the deaths and that he had been briefed by the state’s health commissioner, Shereef Elnahal, who told him that the department is on site and trying to prevent the virus from spreading further.
“I am confident that the steps
being taken by state and local officials will minimize the impact to all those who remain at the facility, including patients and employees,” Murphy said.
Adenoviruses often cause mild illness, particularly in young children, but people with weakened immune systems are at risk of getting severely sick, the CDC said.
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